Just when parenting deja vu starts to settle in, your toddler prances into the kitchen five minutes before dinner, announces that she's poopied and then hands over the end product, which she was considerate enough to scoop up (bare handed, natch) after initially depositing it onto the living room floor.
In six and a half years and three kids, I can honestly say that was a new one on us. Who says life with kids is boring?
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Friday, March 29, 2013
Minivanity Mom: March Madness Edition
In honor of our hometown team's appearance in the Sweet 16 tonight, I'd like
to share a few hastily composed thoughts on the parallels between parenting and
coaching. How would you expand the list?
Offense Sells the Tickets, Defense Wins the Game
Whether you're trapping (for those of you married parents with one child), playing man-to-man or in a zone like my husband and I, the same basic defensive principles apply. Stay down in your stance and communicate.
Exhibit A: After a recent Friday of shuttling people to school, the doctor's office (our 12th visit of 2013), the Walgreen's drive-through and our accountant's house to pick up our tax return, my nerves were shot. So when my eldest commenced with aggravating her brother to the point of inducing ear-piercing shrieks, I gave them fair warning to stop. And when they didn't, I lost it. 24 seconds after my husband got home, I was out the door, but before the lock clicked I made sure to verbal the punishment I had handed down before his arrival: no television for the guilty parties for the rest of the day. Punishment for my husband, too, but that's called taking one for the team.
Clock Management
This is always important but rises to the level of critical late in a close game. Quick shots and ill-advised threes are not what most coaches look for when time is running out and you're up a bucket or two. I learned last week that most coaches even designate an assistant to do nothing but watch the clock late in the game to ensure they don't lose even a tenth of a second after a made shot or turnover. I need one of those on school mornings.
My teacher husband is usually long gone before our kids wake up, which means I have the pleasure of cattle prodding our daughter to eat breakfast, brush her teeth and hair and get dressed while I scramble to pack lunches, snacks and the permission slip-Malaria kit donation-library books-baggie of Box Tops-signed progress report o' the day. Inevitably, this process goes down to the wire. The kicker is I'm usually awake by 5:30 a.m., but nine mornings out of 10 I use that time to a) hear myself think and b) fold laundry, prep dinner for that evening, check e-mail, stuff outgrown/outdated clothing in a back for the Vietnam Veterans donation truck that makes a monthly stop at our house, and so on. Have I considered doing those things before going to bed at night? Yes, but if I don't fall asleep with my 5- and 6-year olds, then I'm more interested in eating ice cream and watching the tournament games than in washing the dinner dishes.
Game Changers
A stand-out player, a pivotal foul call, a hustle play: all game changers, people or points in time that swing the momentum or, uh, change the course of the game. In our house, this is my 6-year old. Between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 3:15 p.m., Monday through Friday, peace reigns at our house. My son and younger daughter co-exist happily (mostly because my son is a peace maker who is supremely tolerant of his little sister), and I, meanwhile, don't feel like I'm enduring a four-hour cross-examination by Jack McCoy.
All that changes the moment our neighbor's red van rolls in the driveway.
From the moment she breezes through the door, Tinkerbelle backpack dangling from her hand, navy knee socks shoved down around her ankles, she is intent on wreaking havoc. Well, maybe that's not actually her intent, but it's usually the outcome. If her brother has received anything - a birthday party invitation from a classmate, a Dum Dum from the bank, anything - and she has not been equally compensated, she proclaims injustice and punctuates her proclamation with foot stomps and scowls. (Side note: She sees no problem when the tables are turned, however, as it's "different" when she's the only one of her siblings invited to a paint-your-own pottery party.)
Before she even changes out of her plaid uniform skort, she's pushing buttons, mine included. She is what you would call an agitator, a pot stirrer, relentless and seemingly tireless in her campaign. My prayer is that she will someday constructively channel this tenacity in support of a good cause. Maybe equal pay for women since she's so intent on ensuring there is absolute equality (so long as it favors her) in our home.
Go team!
Offense Sells the Tickets, Defense Wins the Game
Whether you're trapping (for those of you married parents with one child), playing man-to-man or in a zone like my husband and I, the same basic defensive principles apply. Stay down in your stance and communicate.
Exhibit A: After a recent Friday of shuttling people to school, the doctor's office (our 12th visit of 2013), the Walgreen's drive-through and our accountant's house to pick up our tax return, my nerves were shot. So when my eldest commenced with aggravating her brother to the point of inducing ear-piercing shrieks, I gave them fair warning to stop. And when they didn't, I lost it. 24 seconds after my husband got home, I was out the door, but before the lock clicked I made sure to verbal the punishment I had handed down before his arrival: no television for the guilty parties for the rest of the day. Punishment for my husband, too, but that's called taking one for the team.
Clock Management
This is always important but rises to the level of critical late in a close game. Quick shots and ill-advised threes are not what most coaches look for when time is running out and you're up a bucket or two. I learned last week that most coaches even designate an assistant to do nothing but watch the clock late in the game to ensure they don't lose even a tenth of a second after a made shot or turnover. I need one of those on school mornings.
My teacher husband is usually long gone before our kids wake up, which means I have the pleasure of cattle prodding our daughter to eat breakfast, brush her teeth and hair and get dressed while I scramble to pack lunches, snacks and the permission slip-Malaria kit donation-library books-baggie of Box Tops-signed progress report o' the day. Inevitably, this process goes down to the wire. The kicker is I'm usually awake by 5:30 a.m., but nine mornings out of 10 I use that time to a) hear myself think and b) fold laundry, prep dinner for that evening, check e-mail, stuff outgrown/outdated clothing in a back for the Vietnam Veterans donation truck that makes a monthly stop at our house, and so on. Have I considered doing those things before going to bed at night? Yes, but if I don't fall asleep with my 5- and 6-year olds, then I'm more interested in eating ice cream and watching the tournament games than in washing the dinner dishes.
Game Changers
A stand-out player, a pivotal foul call, a hustle play: all game changers, people or points in time that swing the momentum or, uh, change the course of the game. In our house, this is my 6-year old. Between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 3:15 p.m., Monday through Friday, peace reigns at our house. My son and younger daughter co-exist happily (mostly because my son is a peace maker who is supremely tolerant of his little sister), and I, meanwhile, don't feel like I'm enduring a four-hour cross-examination by Jack McCoy.
All that changes the moment our neighbor's red van rolls in the driveway.
From the moment she breezes through the door, Tinkerbelle backpack dangling from her hand, navy knee socks shoved down around her ankles, she is intent on wreaking havoc. Well, maybe that's not actually her intent, but it's usually the outcome. If her brother has received anything - a birthday party invitation from a classmate, a Dum Dum from the bank, anything - and she has not been equally compensated, she proclaims injustice and punctuates her proclamation with foot stomps and scowls. (Side note: She sees no problem when the tables are turned, however, as it's "different" when she's the only one of her siblings invited to a paint-your-own pottery party.)
Before she even changes out of her plaid uniform skort, she's pushing buttons, mine included. She is what you would call an agitator, a pot stirrer, relentless and seemingly tireless in her campaign. My prayer is that she will someday constructively channel this tenacity in support of a good cause. Maybe equal pay for women since she's so intent on ensuring there is absolute equality (so long as it favors her) in our home.
Go team!
Friday, December 7, 2012
When being who you are is not enough
Like most American households with inhabitants under the age of 12, we have an Elf on the Shelf. From mid-November until last Saturday, we counted the days, hours and minutes until he would make his annual December 1st debut.
When we brought our elf home two years ago, I had high hopes that his presence would, as the brightly illustrated, irritatingly rhyming book that accompanied him suggested, encourage our kids to tow the line for at least 25 days out of the year. I don't even bother reminding them that the elf is watching any more, as he's watched them argue, whine and blatantly disobey for the past two years and yet Santa has still made substantial deposits under our tree each time. Oh well.
What the book also suggests is that this elf is supposed to sit (sit!) on a shelf (a shelf!) and observe. He can't talk, and he can't be touched (sensory processing disorder, perhaps?). He's just supposed to sit. On a shelf. Hence the name, right?
Wrong.
Each morning for the past week, our neighbor carpool pals have skipped through our front door and immediately begun to regale my kids with stories of where they've found their clever (and sometimes naughty) elf.
This morning, he had commandeered the family's shoes, arranging them like train cars under the tree and coaxing the kids' stuffed animals into hopping aboard while he played conductor. Two mornings ago (or was it yesterday? I've lost track.) he was riding a Lego dirt bike up a ramp of brightly-wrapped gifts. The day before that, they caught him with a Barbie on his lap (naughty elf, indeed.)
That elf is making ours look like a first-rate dud. Our elf sits. On shelves. Sometimes he moves from one to another but always (until yesterday when the beginnings of an inferiority complex finally drove him to swing trapeze style from our dining room chandelier. My daughter's response when they found him hanging there like a little red bat? "Our elf finally did something funny!" My son's? "Yeah. That's kind of funny. I guess." ) he just sits.
In his defense, our elf has to find a perch at least a few feet off the ground to avoid getting spirited away and possibly dunked in the toilet by our 16-month old, who poos-poos rules in general and would thus have no qualms in breaking the "no touching" rule.
Beyond that, I'm going to guess that our elf is tired from all his flying back and forth to the North Pole to tell Santa how ornery our kids are (not that it matters) and does well to climb back up to his shelf when he makes his move each morning at 5:00. Or maybe he's tired from all those loads of laundry he's been doing for me in the wee hours of the night. If anyone has a line on that kind of elf, please share the love.
And if anyone has any suggestions for clever, exciting and/or naughty stunts our elf could pull off between now and Christmas morning, send those along too. If I'm, I mean he's, not too exhausted, we may just give them a whirl.
When we brought our elf home two years ago, I had high hopes that his presence would, as the brightly illustrated, irritatingly rhyming book that accompanied him suggested, encourage our kids to tow the line for at least 25 days out of the year. I don't even bother reminding them that the elf is watching any more, as he's watched them argue, whine and blatantly disobey for the past two years and yet Santa has still made substantial deposits under our tree each time. Oh well.
What the book also suggests is that this elf is supposed to sit (sit!) on a shelf (a shelf!) and observe. He can't talk, and he can't be touched (sensory processing disorder, perhaps?). He's just supposed to sit. On a shelf. Hence the name, right?
Wrong.
Each morning for the past week, our neighbor carpool pals have skipped through our front door and immediately begun to regale my kids with stories of where they've found their clever (and sometimes naughty) elf.
This morning, he had commandeered the family's shoes, arranging them like train cars under the tree and coaxing the kids' stuffed animals into hopping aboard while he played conductor. Two mornings ago (or was it yesterday? I've lost track.) he was riding a Lego dirt bike up a ramp of brightly-wrapped gifts. The day before that, they caught him with a Barbie on his lap (naughty elf, indeed.)
That elf is making ours look like a first-rate dud. Our elf sits. On shelves. Sometimes he moves from one to another but always (until yesterday when the beginnings of an inferiority complex finally drove him to swing trapeze style from our dining room chandelier. My daughter's response when they found him hanging there like a little red bat? "Our elf finally did something funny!" My son's? "Yeah. That's kind of funny. I guess." ) he just sits.
In his defense, our elf has to find a perch at least a few feet off the ground to avoid getting spirited away and possibly dunked in the toilet by our 16-month old, who poos-poos rules in general and would thus have no qualms in breaking the "no touching" rule.
Beyond that, I'm going to guess that our elf is tired from all his flying back and forth to the North Pole to tell Santa how ornery our kids are (not that it matters) and does well to climb back up to his shelf when he makes his move each morning at 5:00. Or maybe he's tired from all those loads of laundry he's been doing for me in the wee hours of the night. If anyone has a line on that kind of elf, please share the love.
And if anyone has any suggestions for clever, exciting and/or naughty stunts our elf could pull off between now and Christmas morning, send those along too. If I'm, I mean he's, not too exhausted, we may just give them a whirl.
Friday, November 30, 2012
We are what we eat
There comes a time in the StereoMom's life when she realizes that if she were at a cocktail party or work function and the small talk turned to literature, she would be forced to admit that the stack on her bedside table was more about form than function and that the last book she'd actually read had a very high illustration to text ratio.
When I reached that point, I dug out my library card (because we StereoMom's have to save our pennies for giant pickles from the snack cart in the school cafeteria so our child isn't the only one who never gets to buy a snack) and started surfing the stacks. My first choice was Sula, a Toni Morrison book recommended to me by our summer office intern, a 19-year old with nothing but time and, fortunately, good taste in books.
Energized by the intellectual jolt and intrigued by an article I'd read in one of the Edible Communities magazines, I trotted back to the library and plucked a couple of Michael Pollan books - specifically, Food Rules, An Eater's Manual and The Omnivore's Dilemma - from the shelves.
Unfortunately, the books did not come with any warnings for StereoMoms with a high propensity for "mommy guilt", and so it is that I find myself fresh off of Food Rules and at once inspired to ditch the fat, sugar, salt and general excess that characterize the so-called Western diet and horrified by the amount of fat, sugar, salt and general excess that characterize the dietary habits of our family.
When I crawled into bed with the book two nights ago, my husband asked me what I was reading. After I explained the premise, he gave me a look that said, 'Don't even think about getting rid of my fatty breakfast pork products' before he rolled over and closed his eyes.
The more I read, the more I found myself nodding and silently condemning myself as a mother for passing off "edible foodlike substances" such as Cheetos (but I buy the baked version!) and "fruit" by the foot (my husband gets the blame for those) to my kids.
If my son had any idea what was contained in Pollan's missive, he would organize himself a good ol'-fashioned book burnin' and toss every copy in the barrel. The processed snack category is one of his favorite food groups, second only to candy and desserts.
Moving from our "as is" state to a state more like the one Pollan proposes (he doesn't suggest that people completely forgo treats like fried chicken and cake but simply treat them as the treats they used to be decades ago before the dawn of fast food chains and big box snack companies) would be no small feat, particularly when it comes to the men in my house, who have been known to lunch on Club Crackers and pepperoni. But I was with him all the way until I got to Rule No. 64:
Try to Spend as Much Time Enjoying the Meal as it Took to Prepare It.
Indeed, Mr. Pollan. If you live in an empty nest, I'm sure it is lovely to savor every bite, appreciate the flavor, think about the time that golden baby beet spent blossoming in your garden. But just try enjoying a meal in a house where the adults are outnumbered and the combined age of the majority party is 11, and you, too, might find yourself shoving a stack of Trader Joe's pepperoni and Club Crackers down your gullet before racing from the table to the living room just in time to thwart a king-of-the-couch coup attempt by your toddler.
Somebody pass the Cheez-Its.
When I reached that point, I dug out my library card (because we StereoMom's have to save our pennies for giant pickles from the snack cart in the school cafeteria so our child isn't the only one who never gets to buy a snack) and started surfing the stacks. My first choice was Sula, a Toni Morrison book recommended to me by our summer office intern, a 19-year old with nothing but time and, fortunately, good taste in books.
Energized by the intellectual jolt and intrigued by an article I'd read in one of the Edible Communities magazines, I trotted back to the library and plucked a couple of Michael Pollan books - specifically, Food Rules, An Eater's Manual and The Omnivore's Dilemma - from the shelves.
Unfortunately, the books did not come with any warnings for StereoMoms with a high propensity for "mommy guilt", and so it is that I find myself fresh off of Food Rules and at once inspired to ditch the fat, sugar, salt and general excess that characterize the so-called Western diet and horrified by the amount of fat, sugar, salt and general excess that characterize the dietary habits of our family.
When I crawled into bed with the book two nights ago, my husband asked me what I was reading. After I explained the premise, he gave me a look that said, 'Don't even think about getting rid of my fatty breakfast pork products' before he rolled over and closed his eyes.
The more I read, the more I found myself nodding and silently condemning myself as a mother for passing off "edible foodlike substances" such as Cheetos (but I buy the baked version!) and "fruit" by the foot (my husband gets the blame for those) to my kids.
If my son had any idea what was contained in Pollan's missive, he would organize himself a good ol'-fashioned book burnin' and toss every copy in the barrel. The processed snack category is one of his favorite food groups, second only to candy and desserts.
Moving from our "as is" state to a state more like the one Pollan proposes (he doesn't suggest that people completely forgo treats like fried chicken and cake but simply treat them as the treats they used to be decades ago before the dawn of fast food chains and big box snack companies) would be no small feat, particularly when it comes to the men in my house, who have been known to lunch on Club Crackers and pepperoni. But I was with him all the way until I got to Rule No. 64:
Try to Spend as Much Time Enjoying the Meal as it Took to Prepare It.
Indeed, Mr. Pollan. If you live in an empty nest, I'm sure it is lovely to savor every bite, appreciate the flavor, think about the time that golden baby beet spent blossoming in your garden. But just try enjoying a meal in a house where the adults are outnumbered and the combined age of the majority party is 11, and you, too, might find yourself shoving a stack of Trader Joe's pepperoni and Club Crackers down your gullet before racing from the table to the living room just in time to thwart a king-of-the-couch coup attempt by your toddler.
Somebody pass the Cheez-Its.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
What's new, Pussycat?
It's November 28th, and my four-year old has already dictated four different Christmas lists to anyone who would oblige him a few minutes of time to take short-hand. My six-year old has been debating whether she should ask Grammy for an American Girl doll or an American Girl doll bed for the past two weeks because, as she was quick to point out to my husband, she only has a doll cradle, and American Girl dolls are not babies.
The irony is, in all the items on those four lists, I am hard-pressed to find something that we don't already own in some slightly modified form. Exhibit A: Power Blaster Buzz Lightyear comes equipped with a shield and space gun (that will disappear into the abyss under our couch before the end of the day on December 25), which none of the six Buzz Lightyears littering our living room floor has.
If my daughter opts for the doll, it will be her fourth of the American Girl variety (two she inherited from my niece and one was a birthday gift from Grammy, the bankroller), while the bed would be a novelty on a semantical technicality.
This phenomenon isn't unique to my kids . . . (what do I want for Christmas? Options I've entertained include a new purse, more office-appropriate pants and a salad spinner to replace the one that broke six months ago. After accidentally uttering that last item aloud to my husband I realized how lame it would be to get a salad spinner for Christmas, so I quickly and adamantly told him that I definitely did not want a salad spinner for Christmas.)
. . . or to things. Since I started (sporadically) writing this blog almost a year ago, several of the moms who read it have commented on how much they identify with what I'm saying, which is great. There's comfort in commiserating, satisfaction in standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the daily battles of raising kids, pursuing careers and sweeping three meals worth of crust and crud from underneath the dining room table at the end of each day.
On the flip side, however, those remarks bring into laser focus the undeniable fact that my adventures in parenting, marriage and life in general are ultimately no different than any other mid-30something wife and mom livin' the suburban dream. Funny how one day you just wake up and find that you have become a stereotype. A minivan-driving, carpooling stereotype who has "date nights", stocks her pantry with gummy vitamins and gummy snacks and scolds the teenagers who attend the high school down the street for speeding in her neighborhood.
On second thought, maybe I should just go ahead and ask for that salad spinner.
The irony is, in all the items on those four lists, I am hard-pressed to find something that we don't already own in some slightly modified form. Exhibit A: Power Blaster Buzz Lightyear comes equipped with a shield and space gun (that will disappear into the abyss under our couch before the end of the day on December 25), which none of the six Buzz Lightyears littering our living room floor has.
If my daughter opts for the doll, it will be her fourth of the American Girl variety (two she inherited from my niece and one was a birthday gift from Grammy, the bankroller), while the bed would be a novelty on a semantical technicality.
This phenomenon isn't unique to my kids . . . (what do I want for Christmas? Options I've entertained include a new purse, more office-appropriate pants and a salad spinner to replace the one that broke six months ago. After accidentally uttering that last item aloud to my husband I realized how lame it would be to get a salad spinner for Christmas, so I quickly and adamantly told him that I definitely did not want a salad spinner for Christmas.)
. . . or to things. Since I started (sporadically) writing this blog almost a year ago, several of the moms who read it have commented on how much they identify with what I'm saying, which is great. There's comfort in commiserating, satisfaction in standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the daily battles of raising kids, pursuing careers and sweeping three meals worth of crust and crud from underneath the dining room table at the end of each day.
On the flip side, however, those remarks bring into laser focus the undeniable fact that my adventures in parenting, marriage and life in general are ultimately no different than any other mid-30something wife and mom livin' the suburban dream. Funny how one day you just wake up and find that you have become a stereotype. A minivan-driving, carpooling stereotype who has "date nights", stocks her pantry with gummy vitamins and gummy snacks and scolds the teenagers who attend the high school down the street for speeding in her neighborhood.
On second thought, maybe I should just go ahead and ask for that salad spinner.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Lights, camera, action!
Our six-year old had a solo - a poem - in her kindergarten Thanksgiving chapel, which was two days before her brother's preschool Thanksgiving program. With both events scheduled for weekday mornings (are we the only parents who have to work to pay those tuition bills?), my husband, a teacher, had to make a difficult choice, and the Friday event, which included lunch, won out.
In my ongoing campaign for the title of Wife/Mother of the Year, I made a point of charging our video camera and actually remembering to take it with me to the chapel program so my husband could at least watch a replay of our daughter's 17 seconds of fame. Sliding into the gym minutes before the program started, I had forfeited all the good spots on the bleachers. Determined to find a good angle for filming, I parked myself on the end of a semicircle of first graders on the gym floor, trying not to wonder (or care) if any other parents thought I was a crazy pageant mom.
As soon as the first notes wafted from the piano, I flipped on the camera and hoisted my right arm in a proud parent salute, my eyes darting back and forth between live action and camera screen. The kids belted out song after song about pilgrims, Indians (I know the term isn't PC, but if Florida State can get away with having some guy decked out in full Seminole face paint ride onto their football field every week and slam a spear into midfield, then I guess a bunch of five- and six-year olds should get a pass too), and eating turkey, until I was afraid our short-life battery and my tired arm would give out before the poem was recited.
I am proud to say that both the battery and my arm made it through the entire show. I am embarrassed to admit that I shot most of the program, poem included, with the camera on pause. I didn't even realize it until I got home and attempted to show my dad, who'd pulled house duty with our 15-month old so I could focus on the program (for all the good that did), her big moment that was, oddly, nowhere on the camera.
Needless to say, I let my husband man the camera during the preschool show, which lasted approximately seven minutes.
Hope your Thanksgiving was happy and that you enjoy this rendition of the holiday classic, "I'm a Little Indian."
In my ongoing campaign for the title of Wife/Mother of the Year, I made a point of charging our video camera and actually remembering to take it with me to the chapel program so my husband could at least watch a replay of our daughter's 17 seconds of fame. Sliding into the gym minutes before the program started, I had forfeited all the good spots on the bleachers. Determined to find a good angle for filming, I parked myself on the end of a semicircle of first graders on the gym floor, trying not to wonder (or care) if any other parents thought I was a crazy pageant mom.
As soon as the first notes wafted from the piano, I flipped on the camera and hoisted my right arm in a proud parent salute, my eyes darting back and forth between live action and camera screen. The kids belted out song after song about pilgrims, Indians (I know the term isn't PC, but if Florida State can get away with having some guy decked out in full Seminole face paint ride onto their football field every week and slam a spear into midfield, then I guess a bunch of five- and six-year olds should get a pass too), and eating turkey, until I was afraid our short-life battery and my tired arm would give out before the poem was recited.
I am proud to say that both the battery and my arm made it through the entire show. I am embarrassed to admit that I shot most of the program, poem included, with the camera on pause. I didn't even realize it until I got home and attempted to show my dad, who'd pulled house duty with our 15-month old so I could focus on the program (for all the good that did), her big moment that was, oddly, nowhere on the camera.
Needless to say, I let my husband man the camera during the preschool show, which lasted approximately seven minutes.
Hope your Thanksgiving was happy and that you enjoy this rendition of the holiday classic, "I'm a Little Indian."
Saturday, October 6, 2012
The war on women
Watching one "15-minute" segment of the recent presidential debate before dozing off inspired me to make an attempt to return to the world of the socially and politically informed (Yes, I am one of those moms who completely checked out of the current events loop when my kids arrived on the scene. I will be the first to admit that I usually can't stay awake long enough after the kids go to bed to read in uninterrupted silence or watch the news, and on the rare occasions that I can I prefer vegging out with a mindless home decorating magazine to watching graphic images of the violence in the Middle East or following the latest reality TV show "celebrity" break-up news.)
So it was that I found myself trolling for post-debate commentary to see what I'd missed in the 60 minutes that I'd been snoring on the couch.
I was not surprised to find polarized, passionate discourse replete with references to Big Bird and intolerant assertions from liberals who pride themselves on their tolerance (can I get an amen if you've ever disagreed with a lefty and been told you're wrong?) Nor was it news to me that there's a war on women. What was news to me was that Public Enemy No. 1 is the ultra-conservative, misogynistic GOP.
Women from sea to shining sea are claiming that Republicans won't sleep until every birth control pill has been flushed into the Atlantic and every woman returned to her rightful place at the helm of a well-kept home. Having been out of the loop for more than half a decade, I can't really say if these assertions are politically accurate, but what struck me in reading article after article about the persecution and injustice we as women face was: have we identified the real enemy?
A wealthy male presidential candidate whose wife chose a career in child rearing makes a convenient poster child for the war on women. But ladies, before we launch an overseas attack, let's take care of business on the homefront.
Let's stop spending billions of dollars each year on breast augmentations and Botox and start liking what we see in the mirror.
Let's stop blaming legislation for the fact that we can't achieve superwoman status and admit that we simply can't do and have it all. Let's make those difficult choices, accept the trade-offs that come with them and support our sisters who choose a different path.
Let's stop judging other women's marriages (or divorces) and parenting styles and start being more sympathetic and thoughtful when a friend opens up about family struggles.
Let's stop cutting ourselves down and start building stronger self-images, friendships and support systems.
Let's make like Nike and just do it, ladies. If not for our ourselves, then for our daughters.
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